


Count Backwards From Ten

by BlindtoDreams



Category: Glee
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-05-05
Packaged: 2017-11-04 18:41:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/396996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlindtoDreams/pseuds/BlindtoDreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Burt Hummel's congressional campaign draws to a successful close, he is given some unwelcome insight into what life in the political arena entails - specifically, ignorant voters with too much to say and too little filter. </p>
<p>After an in-home interview puts the faces of the Hummel family on television, the negative attention turns quickly to violence, beginning with death threats sent to their private address and an eventual attempt on the life of his son.</p>
<p>Based on an angst meme prompt and modified with the prompter's permission!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miggy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miggy/gifts).



> Warnings: Violence, hateful language, discussions of medical trauma, etc.
> 
> Original Glee Angst Meme prompt: 
> 
> "As the campaign reaches its end and he's stunned to see that he's actually leading the polls, Burt gives a speech with his full family onstage with him. Someone in the audience pulls out a gun and shoots Kurt. Up to you if Kurt is just injured, comatose, or killed, but either way Burt has to deal with the fact that it was his decision that put Kurt into this situation where he was made so visible and vulnerable."

A television was always on at home.  
  
Since the start of his campaign and its unexpected hook into the hearts of well-meaning parents throughout the region, Carole or Kurt were insistent on dedicated news coverage. They wanted to celebrate with him when he received praise. They wanted to help him craft rebuttals when he received opposition. They wanted to see his face, their hero, on the screen. Their hero, they said.  
  
 _Hero._  
  
To Burt, it was like having a boarder, an unwelcome guest, opinionated and two-faced. All hours of the day and night he could hear the soft, static hum laying its traps, deceptive, cleverly crafted, just under the stream of his consciousness.  
  
He made a point to ignore it, letting public opinion be nothing more than background noise. He wanted to stand up for what he believed in and let the rest fall where it was going to fall.  
  
What a stupid, stupid, stupid thing to do.  
  
He should've paid attention right away. He should've known the ugliness of men and the pain they would inflict when they felt righteous. Instead, he bought into the myth that he'd been selling just as blindly as his supporters did - the myth of progress, of promise and hope. The myth of acceptance, the myth of freedom not hyperbolic and vague, but accessible, applicable by all and enjoyed by those who needed it most.  
  
 _"You expect me to believe that we're going to get objective, unbiased leadership from this guy, this random Ohio mechanic on his second marriage raising a gay son who sings in the choir? He's crafted his political strategy out of nothing but the needs of his family, without regard for anyone else. That is not a politician.."_  
  
Kurt had cried over that one. Hypocrisy, satire and vitriol alike landed only in the hot little core of him that prompted wit and fury in retaliation, but he cried over that one.  
  
It wasn't because of his inclusion in the statement. "Gay son" had become both compliment and insult in the troubling arguments from support and opposition alike. It was the way she'd said _second marriage_.  
  
When Burt's popularity launched, he became subject to every weasel's trick in the mudslinging handbook. It wasn't a lie that he'd been married twice. No one could challenge the legitimacy of the statement, and nobody would. It was the suggestion that made it offensive, the intentional crafting of a sentence to imply wrongdoing. It would give anyone who didn't know Burt's history the impression that he'd left, that he'd given up, that he'd done something objectionable.  
  
Burt ignored it.  
  
He also ignored, _"there is no more obvious an example of someone pushing the gay agenda than this man, this Burt Hummel, coming out of left field to run for political office and support the arts so that his gay kids can have a singing group at school. These are not the issues America needs to be focusing on, not now. Too much is at stake to appoint even one state senator on so flimsy a platform."_  
  
He also ignored internet forums and comment threads on news articles, first discovered as relevant to their family life by Finn, who'd searched his name and turned up a toxic wasteland of hateful invectives and confused, violent urges.  
  
Burt ignored _everything,_ whether positive or negative, unless he was called upon in interviews to answer a slanted question. He didn't want to confuse himself. He didn't want to waste his energy, the family's energy, on the bitterness of unhappy strangers. He went on in that state of enforced oblivion, avoiding the acid and the spit, the fury and the fear, until polls reflected so favorably on his name that an in-home segment was conducted by state sponsored media.  
  
They wanted him, the proud, supportive father, and Kurt, the son who'd inspired his success, sitting side by side, discussing their home dynamic and dispelling rumors of dysfunction.  
  
Now, remembering Kurt's eager preening for their moment in the spotlight was enough to make him dizzy with pain.  
  



	2. Chapter 2

The night before camera crews arrived, Kurt insisted on giving Burt a facial.  
  
"This is not happening," he'd said, settled all the way back into the safety of his recliner and hoping to look resolved. More rightly, he was cowering in fear from the stainless attache case in his son's hands. He'd seen its guts exposed before. More than half the products looked, to him, like instruments of torture.  
  
"Come on," Kurt goaded, not the whine of a child, but the confident command of royalty. "This is the first time I'm ever going to be on television, and people are going to determine from you what I'll look like when I'm older. Do you want a casting director to pass me by because he thinks I'll be puffy and wrinkled after 35?"  
  
Burt looked helplessly to Carole, who adopted an amused neutrality. Finn was asleep. He was without ally, and Kurt was standing over him, stubborn and immoveable.  
  
"Fine, but she can't watch," he gestured to Carole's hand-hidden mirth. "I know she's got that camera phone thing on her somewhere."  
  
"Oh, for sure, don't let me interrupt your day at the spa," Carole said.  
  
When she left the room, Burt sat - on Kurt's orders - with his knees under the coffee table, while Kurt arranged products from his case in order of necessity. Burt interrupted the process with statements of incredulity and dismay from time to time, insisting either, "that thing's not coming near my face," or, "there's no reason you're going to need tweezers," but Kurt worked with serene patience, a skilled technician if only in the home.  
  
Lit by a single lamp and the television's constant glow, with Kurt's skinny, determined fingers working creams and ointments into his father's tired skin, the two of them outlasted the bedtime imposed by their responsibilities and weathered half the night together.  
  
Burt's resistance gave way to a self-effacing sense of humor as the hours wore on. He was drunk on the absurdity of the experience. They laughed loudly, made fun of each other, even switched the channel from news coverage to Nick at Nite and talked about when Kurt was a kid.  
  
Side by side on the sofa, both unrecognizable for the yellow-white masks they were wearing and eating popcorn out of a single bowl (the sole exception Kurt allowed Burt to make on his "Public Appearances Diet"), father and son had this discussion:  
  
Kurt, nose in the air, pretending, playful, "I was never a kid."  
  
Then Burt, struck silent, staring at his boy, this strange, impressive, headstrong little person he'd helped create, answered, "I guess you're right about that," affectionate and passive.  
  
The next morning's interview went too well, and Burt should've known better. He knew things didn't come in perfect, presentable packages. He'd been alive too long to believe their appearance on a news segment would inspire change in the hearts of the ignorant.  
  
A tidy woman in a tidy suit asked them tidy questions. Kurt quipped, Burt reasoned, and the final edit was cut cleverly to present a charming duo full of love and respect and opinions on the world around them. Positive feedback hit the household for three days, with ground gained in polled voters and Kurt joking each morning at breakfast that it was only a matter of time before Hollywood came calling for the rights to his story.  
  
Even the most skeptical of men would've been suckered by the fantasy.  
  
But Carole swiped the mail from his hands on the fifth afternoon, and Kurt hadn't joked that morning at breakfast. Finn turned nervous when he realized Burt was home, looking anywhere but at his face, and excused himself as soon as dinner was done.  
  
"Someone want to fill me in about what's going on around here?"  
  
"Nothing," Kurt answered, quick and severe, dabbing a napkin at the corners of his mouth.  
  
Burt could scold the lie later. For now, all he wanted was to understand.  
  
"Carole?"  
  
"I think we're all a little tired, is all. It's been a hectic couple of days. Maybe we'll all feel better in the morning?"  
  
Burt watched the exchange shift, by Carole's expression, from being between the two of them to being between her and Kurt, and his stomach tightened.


	3. Chapter 3

She relieved him without being asked the minute they were behind closed doors, sitting on their bed's edge in a faded sweatshirt and looking gray around the eyes.  
  
"Kurt made us promise not to tell you, and I thought . . . maybe, maybe he was right. Maybe it would be an unnecessary stress, but. Parent to parent, I would need to know."  
  
Burt sat beside her, attentive and quiet but tasting the copper sting of panic at the back of his tongue.  
  
"We got a letter yesterday," she continued. "While you were at work. It came here. It came to the house."  
  
Her hand drew it from the nighstand, passed it off to him, then traveled to her neck where it rubbed a worried circle.  
  
Three sentences _: You represent everything bad about this country, and your fag son is going to hell. Sooner than you think. I'll make sure of it._  
  
Because they were alone, because blood was in his ears, because his head and chest and fingers constricted, snake-like, punishing, Burt let himself speak the first bit of poison to fill up his mouth, "I'll kill the sonofabitch."  
  
Carole's stress was managed in the same way each time it struck her, with a lift of her head and a thinning of her lips, as if she were facing the world's evil with challenge and antagonism.  
  
"There was no return address. We don't know who sent it."  
  
Burt said again, "I'll _kill_ the sonofabitch!"  
  
Neither of them slept.


	4. Chapter 4

Burt gathered the family the next morning, prepared to withhold both boys from school and seek the protection of local law enforcement on their way to a more permanent solution. He hadn't eaten, and his eyes were rimmed with violet sags of sleepy skin and an ire that burned from someplace deeper than sight. He and Carole planned a simple conversation with the boys, an acknowledgement of what life in the public eye could mean for their safety and an order that they weren't to leave the house until the letter was investigated.  
  
With Kurt in front of him, though, with that incredible, infuriating, fully formed _self_ he'd grown into over the years, with the vague facial similarities shared between them and the parts of him that still looked six years old to Burt, he lost his way. He could only see a danger, ambiguous but certain, shadowing his son's vulnerable shoulder, and he lost his way.  
  
His voice came out accusatory and tight.  
  
"How could you try and keep something like this from me?"  
  
"I can't believe you told him," Kurt muttered into his palm, shaking his head until his eyes fell shut and preparing with a breath to face the very discussion he'd been trying to avoid.  
  
Carole wanted to amend what Kurt took for betrayal, always nervous in a secret part of herself that their bond was too good to be true and might one day fracture, but she'd cleared her conscience. Burt deserved to know.  
  
"Kurt, I'm sorry. It just wasn't right to pretend it didn't happen. This is serious."  
  
"No, it isn't! That was the whole point. You agreed with me, you looked right in my face and promised not to bring it up."  
  
"She's right," Burt interjected, nearly a yell but too defeated in tone to be intimidating. "Someone threatened a member of this family. We're more exposed, now, Kurt, we don't know who could be watching. Thanks to that TV spot, they've seen your face, they know where you go to school."  
  
Somehow, the logic of what he'd said hadn't hit home until it left him. He hadn't thought about, hadn't even considered.  
  
 _. . . with his son, Kurt, a senior at McKinley High School . . ._  
  
They knew where he went to school. He'd let them air where his son went to school. He'd let them air his face, to anyone, anyone at all, any psycho within 500 miles, within a thousand.  
  
 _What kind of fucking father?_  
  
Kurt cut through the quagmire of gathering guilt with his reassurance.  
  
"It's just a letter, dad. It's a stupid threat. Politicians get them all the time. Literally, _every_ day." There was a particular, pointed bitterness added when he said in conclusion, "We all agreed on that two days ago, and that it wasn't worth stressing you out over."  
  
"Threatening my kid is worth me being 'stressed,' Kurt."  
  
"Read some of the other letters you've been getting, then, there are at least two with a marriage proposal," Kurt countered, intolerant of the sudden mutiny against his flawless logic. "Read those internet forums Finn told you about, listen to the call-ins on the news segments we try to get you to pay attention to every day. It's not worth you being stressed. People say stupid things."  
  
"Not like this." Burt bristled with frustration at having to spell the difference out for the kid twice in his lifetime. He was too willing to forgive, to dig for the buried gold in a black heart.  
  
He was too young to accept that some people were purely rotten.  
  
Kurt argued without hesitation, undeterred by the attempt Burt was making at finality.  
  
" _Exactly_ like this."   
  
"It's kind of true," Finn offered nervously, often a silent spectator to family discord unless he was at the heart of it. "Two weeks ago, a guy threatened to come to the garage and 'straighten you out,' that didn't happen."  
  
" _See_?" Kurt gestured at his brother's meek support with a frantic arm. "You feel powerful when you're anonymous. Whoever it was, they're just trying to scare you, and they're counting on it working, not on having to actually go through with it."  
  
Burt shook his head and bridged his knuckles together for a place to rest behind.  
  
"Bottom line, kid - I'm having a hard time believing that any of this is worth putting my family in danger."  
  
Carole ghosted her hand across his shoulder, a light touch almost too insignificant to feel. She was wrestling on her own with which side of the debate to plant her foot in. As a mother, it was incomprehensible to take such a threat as anything but dire, as anything but honest and deserving of renewed caution and eventual punishment. Still, she also knew the flaccid truth of weak, angry men behind computer screens and phone lines, and how hard Burt had worked to get where he was.  
  
It was a losing battle, and she could do nothing but support him, silently, whichever direction he moved.  
  
"Bottom line," Kurt echoed, and he was so talented with that voice of his, with the way it could evaporate from a stab of derision to a puff of smoke, to something delicate as cashmere and just as enjoyable, that when he stood from the sofa and walked to Burt's knee and sat in front of him, pulling his hands apart to hold them tight, Burt was powerless.  
  
"Bottom line, I'm not letting this stop us. I'm not letting it stop _you_. We can be careful. Finn and I can ride to school with Carole in the morning, maybe, and we can install an alarm, and we can let the cops know what happened. We can take precautions. We just can't let it change anything."  
  
Burt shook his head again, an oblivious reaction to ideas he didn't like, but he had no words to fight back with. Kurt, however, could see the crumbling edges of his father's resolve as though it were a tangible thing in the room with the four of them, and he pressed on, earnest and eager and sounding so, so certain.  
  
"What you're doing is amazing, dad. Making sure kids like me have somewhere to express themselves in school, the place where they're most likely to feel that they can't? It's amazing. We're all so proud of you. And we knew from the very beginning that it was going to mean changes for the family, didn't we? We can handle it." A satisfied smile creased his soft, round face on one side. "You're not going to let one little bully scare you off, are you?"  
  
Life was a different animal, lately. A rabid one. He so rarely had a minute to let himself get comfortable with new developments like he used to, to let things roll into him one wave at a time and be absorbed if they made sense and expelled if they did not.   
  
He had a minute now, though. They were stretched out thin and infuriating in front of him, one after another, no end in sight.

He had the time to wonder, again and again, _what kind of fucking father,_ because no question pressed as hard, nothing so deeply confounded him as that, he was consumed by the need to know, what kind of father let himself be that easily directed away from what he knew was right?


	5. Chapter 5

An alarm was installed on the house four days later. Police were informed of the threat, rides to and from school were arranged for both boys, and watchful eyes over agitated shoulders became a troubling routine. Precautions. An empty promise.  
  
Another letter arrived on the heels of the alarm, and then another, neither more informative or helpful than the first, but each containing the same sentiment.  
  
Burt became a caricature of himself, tight-lipped and tense, brooding until he developed headaches. Which approach was more sensible? Refuse to leave town when he knew he had to, or bring Kurt with him every time?  
  
Carole told him once, in the privacy of a hotel room Burt had overcrowded with his concern, that he couldn't keep them suspended in motion for much longer. He needed either to drop from the race and be at peace with his family, or see the race through, but give it the focus it deserved, the focus it demanded.  
  
"Living in both worlds like this isn't doing any of us any good."  
  
It was sound advice, if stiff and impatient. He was fully prepared to nod along agreeably, but he knew even then that he'd ignore it.  
  
Then, the letters stopped, disappearing from their lives as quickly and with as little explanation as they'd come in the first place. One day bled into another and into another, the occasional patrols of police cars through the neighborhood dried up, and their lives limped forward one uncertain step at a time.  
  
An officer assured Burt when they met for an update, "Nine times out of ten, a threat is just that. When a criminal wants to hurt you, he just hurts you. No warning."  
  
It wasn't immediately effective, but like a germ, like a slumbering infection holed up in his belly and waiting, waiting for a weak moment to spread its influence out, eventually it took hold and acted as a sedative against his fear for Kurt.  
  
The family grew comfortable again, an unintended progression that not even Burt noticed. The curfews he imposed were stretched at such a snail's pace as to be invisible. First the boys were five minutes late with a phone call beforehand, then ten with the same. Then came five minutes with no phone call, then fifteen, then thirty, wrapped as they were in the oblivious and selfish satisfaction of teen romances. Kurt began to drive his own car to school without incident. Finn rode with him, then stopped.  
  
Weekly dinners, which fell out of favor in the management of stress and campaign efforts, were suddenly reinstated, and with weekly dinners came weekly excuses. For all the balance of personal pride and respect for others Burt tried to instill in his son, he'd still grown up to be less than punctual and occasionally inconsiderate about time that wasn't his.  
  
 _I'll be there, dad, just twenty more minutes,_ or, _Blaine and I made plans to go ice skating_ , or, _Mercedes and Tina invited me to a movie instead_ were familiar songs in their communication. Burt would bicker back, either to refuse permission and start a fight between them, or to grant permission with a weary voice skirting the edge of disappointment, which would dig into Kurt's subconscious until he came home early anyway. _Fathers and sons_ , he'd think, and remember waging the same wars for independence against his own dad, years gone by now but still a warm memory always close at hand.  
  
Tonight, Burt predicted, with Hummel Tire & Lube shrinking in his rear view mirror, would be no exception.  
  
His available hours for management of the garage were limited by the success of his campain, but a lazy Saturday afternoon meant he'd exchanged crisp, tailored jackets and immaculate fingernails for coveralls and a dirty rag for spills that was barely more than an oilstain by now.  
  
It was a satisfying feeling, a respite from the character he'd built out of politics, and it was made all the more satisfying by both of his sons being with him, working in unified camaraderie. Three men, filthy, shining with sweat and grunting over manual labor, making progress that could be reliably measured and physically proven.  
  
When he had a moment to reflect at the day's end, he took it. He leaned back into his heels, pocketed both hands and watched his boys, his family, each tightening opposite ends of a hose strung between the radiator and thermostat housing of a Honda Civic.  
  
Burt knew he should hold on to that moment. This was what he'd worked for, what he worked for still. He took time to imagine, aching with affection, that Finn would be running this place to support a family decades from now. He thought of being soft and gray on some future Thanksgiving, where he'd prop Kurt's son on his knee and insist that, yes, in fact, daddy _did_ used to wear faded denim and let his face be smudged with oil, while Kurt denied it vehemently but with a smile.  
  
Kurt, as usual, was the one to jerk his father back to reality, cutting into dreams with his sharpness and sarcasm.  
  
"If you're just going to stand there anyway, you should go home and get some rest."  
  
A grin cracked across half of Burt's face. "Old men 'get some rest.' I refuse to be told to 'get some rest' until I'm in my 70s."  
  
Kurt countered quickly, "You won't make it to your 70s at this rate."  
  
"It's almost time to go, anyway," Finn said, face aimed at the clock on the wall. "Mom just texted, she's already making dinner."  
  
"Alright," Burt said, agreeable in hunger if nothing else, and willing to be jolted from fantasy for the pleasures of the present. "Let's clean up, get back to this tomorrow."  
  
"You go ahead, dad. We'll take care of it."  
  
Rarely but always with impact, Kurt was charitable, even if only to his father; he was willing to be inconvenienced. It was a vital component to their relationship, to the private, unspoken oneness they'd achieved in weathering grief together and coming out so remarkably solid on the other side. Even with a mother figure in their lives, Kurt still assumed the role of caretaker wherever there was a window.  
  
It didn't matter to him that he was volunteering Finn's compliance, or that Burt would see no more than 45 minutes of peace as a result of leaving early. He only saw the benefit of those 45 minutes, and was ushering Burt out the door before Finn's rolled eyes and frustrated gestures made a difference.  
  
"You sure? There's a lot that needs doin', there's sweeping up, there's cash-out . . . it'll go faster with three of us."  
  
Kurt shook his head, and Burt could've sworn he saw his chest puff in presented ego when he answered, "I've closed up before, I know how it works." Then he softened. The balance of Kurt's personality was so precise, thin as grass and manageable only by him. He sniped as if he loved nothing, and then relented, toned so far down and speaking with such affection that it stuck between Burt's ribs.  
  
"It's okay, dad. Really. I want to. You deserve a minute to yourself."  
  
Burt left him. A split-second decision that was not a decision at all, not a determination he made with forethought and focus, but a simple willingness to appease his son's hen-like talent for blending chastisement with caretaking.  
  
Burt left him.


	6. Chapter 6

Fifteen minutes past 6:00, half of dinner was already on the table. Looks were being tossed between Burt and Carole which only occur when lovers know each other well. They were having a conversation that, at first, needed no words: their boys would be late coming home.  
  
"What's it going to be?"  
  
"Distracted by a streetlight, maybe."  
  
Carole laughed into a chilled glass of chardonnay and nodded.  
  
Finn and Kurt's mutual habits for forgetting the clock were amplified when they spent time together. Sending them to collect groceries as a team over the summer often resulted in a house full of Doritos and macaroni from Finn, two kinds of organic fruit juice and dry oatmeal for skin care from Kurt, and nearly nothing else the family could make a meal of.  
  
No matter how rigid the punishments given, neither parent could resist the humor - no blood relation, no similar interests and vastly different personalities, but still so much in common. Brothers in behavior if nothing else.  
  
6:37. The phone rang. Burt wiped off his amusement, preparing for the conversation he knew they had to have, because, of course, it was Kurt on the other end of the line. Kurt with an excuse. Kurt pretending guilt to avoid paternal prosecution.  
  
That's how it is when you live with the people you love, and that's how it is when you see them day after day. You take everything, every disagreement about what channel to watch and every request to take out the garbage and every, "goodnight, dad," for granted, assuming blindly, with all of love's endless ignorance, that you'll have another moment just like that one tomorrow.  
  
Of course it would be Kurt. And he'd say that he and Finn stopped at Blockbuster on the way home, but forgot to call. They would argue just at the surface, go to bed riled, and wake up in the morning ready to apologize.  
  
Of course.  
  
But Carole answered first, and though she was smiling when she did, the smile went away. Not in disappointment, not in irritation. The look that replaced her contentment was new to him. He'd never seen it before. It looked like denial.  
  
"Finn," she said, a stab of a word, barely a name but a hard command. "Stop, slow down. What happened?"  
  
Then her hand was on her mouth and her eyes were shining wet. Burt was drawn to be close to her as if by possession, moving his body obliviously and against his will. He heard Finn through the phone, hysterical and high pitched, whining, " _mom, mom_ ," and Carole telling him to listen, telling him to stop, telling him to hang up the phone and call an ambulance.  
  
He didn't want to ask. He couldn't ask. His tongue choked him, fat and clumsy, and when she looked at him after hanging up the phone, something in that expression made him too nauseous to risk opening his mouth.  
  
"We have to go," she said. She looked confused, then angry, then devastated. By the time she spoke again, the cycle started anew. "We have to go to the hospital." She ended with a single word that sounded through his skull like the crack of a hammer, "Kurt," before exploding into motion, searching out car keys and handbags.  
  
Burt kept no recognition of the ride to the hospital, or of taking the keys from her hand, or of ignoring traffic lights and road signs. He didn't understand that moment, the decade he seemed to be spending in a car.  
  
He understood his son's name, only his son's name, _Kurt,_ a siren that overpowered everything else.


	7. Chapter 7

  
Finn was in Carole's arms the minute she and Burt cleared the hospital doors. He talked endlessly to her in muted, muddy hysterics, face pressed to the comfort of her shoulder. He _kept_ talking, he just kept on _talking_ , every poisonous thought regurgitated to rid his body of the toxins.   
  
Burt absorbed the information over and over again from the inexhaustible little stab of Finn's mouth:  
  
He'd stepped off the main floor to empty a bucket of mop water. He was only gone for a minute, _a minute, mom, I swear, it was only for a minute_. He'd heard a conversation from inside the garage and thought Kurt was having to turn away an irate customer.   
  
Then a gunshot.  
  
Carole tried to stifle the storm in Finn, tried to steer him away from blubbered recitations of Kurt with his eyes rolling back, chest pulp-wet and red as rust, coughing up gurgles of blood from a mindlessly chewing mouth. She tried to steer him away from Burt, too, who seemed to darken and withdraw from every word as if it were a hornet's sting. She tried to steer him away from anything but the hard rock of her shoulder, where she held him while hushing his panic with the high whine of her own.  
  
It would torture Burt later, years later, to remember how he coped with that day - building walls to keep out his family, pretending them strangers beyond his concern. He nudged their influence from his brain to focus with near-surgical precision on a single, obsessive goal: finding Kurt.

  
The nearest body in worker's clothing was a middle-aged nurse holding a plastic package in one hand and a clipboard in the other, on the way to a task that didn't matter to Burt. He was oblivious to anything but that goal, couldn't even ask her directly where Kurt was, whether his condition was stable, or if he could take visitation from loved ones. Instead he demanded of her, seeking comfort like a child, "I want my son."

And it was an empty demand in the end, because the nurse who shouldered the burden of his worry told him (after requesting Kurt's name and Burt's information in tones of boundless robotic patience) that Kurt was in surgery. _Surgery._ His son was somewhere in this impassive fortress without him, being cut open by someone he'd never met.   
  
"He's never even had his tonsils out," Burt said in weak protest.

Her answer felt hollow to him; "By my understanding, it was necessary. But he's in skilled hands."

His lips pressed into a tight white line at her certainty. It felt imperative that he not cry in front of these people, in front of the doctors, the nurses, the assistants. He didn't want to upset them, he couldn't afford to rattle them. Why was she standing here in the first place? Why wasn't she back there with Kurt, with the surgeon, watching over his progress?   
  
It came out by accident, fighting past his filters and landing on his tongue, pathetic and heavy - he fixed his helpless stare on the nurse and asked, "What am I supposed to do?"   
  
Whatever her answer was, it didn't land in him. With a hand on his elbow she dispensed a word of comfort, then moved on, assuring as she walked that someone would be out soon to discuss how Kurt was doing.   
  
He asked Carole the same question when he turned around, "What am I supposed to do?"   
  
Carole shook her head at him, a lost, helpless, hysterical gesture, rocking Finn forward and back in the chair beside her.   
  
This was the aftermath, post-apocalyptic - a man stuck under the sterile lights of an emergency room with one son missing, bleeding, dreaming, half-alive, the other in pieces on his wife's shoulder, and all the time in the world for Burt to burn with the knowledge of how responsible he was.


End file.
